The Blurb On The Back:

He’s the Marvel Universe’s Merc With A Mouth!  As quick with a pistol as he is with a one-liner!

Fan-favourite writer Daniel Way brings the crazy with his character-defining run on the Crimson Comedian, the Regeneratin’ Degenerate, the Asinine Assassin … Deadpool!

The X-Men’s favourite frenemy, Deadpool straddles the line between hero and villain, sanity and insanity.  So when a Skrull invasion force lands on Earth, it’s anyone’s guess which side the unpredictable Wade Wilson will join!  The wisecracking, gun-toting, one-man army single-handedly saves a baseball stadium full of fans from a Skrull attack – and promptly surrenders to the invaders, leaving everyone scratching their heads.

Deadpool infiltrates the Skrull ranks – and through all the allegiance swapping, back-stabbing and mental instability, he tries to make good on a contract and get PAID!  But all hell breaks loose when the objective is compromised and his big, fat pay check gets cancelled.  Wade sets out to settle the score – even if that means he has to fight his way through Norman Osborn’s new team of Dark Avengers, made up of the Marvel Universe’s greatest villains in disguise.

And as Deadpool storms his way to the top of Avengers Tower, Osborn goes all in and deploys his bloodthirsty black-ops team of assassins, the Thunderbolts!  Plug up your ears, kids – it’s gonna get loud!

Plus: Two men who can’t die slice one another to ribbons and then blow those ribbons up with lots of explosives as Wolverine and Deadpool hash out their differences in a showdown for the ages! 

You can order Deadpool: The Complete Collection Volume 1 by Daniel Way, Andy Diggle, Steve Dillon, Paco Medina, Carlo Barberi and Bong Dazo from Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

The Review (Cut For Spoilers):

This is a blackly hilarious, highly violent collection of 3 comics featuring Deadpool – Wolverine: Origins #21-25 by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon; Deadpool #1-12 by Daniel Way, Paco Medina and Carlo Barberi; and Thunderbolts #130-131 by Andy Diggle and Bong Dazo.  The book contains a useful summary of Deadpool’s history that explains the interlocking storylines but I got lost at points due to backstory and confusion about which panels to follow.

My only knowledge of Deadpool before reading this book was through the Ryan Reynolds movies but I knew that all of the Marvel Universe titles have convoluted backstories and interlocking histories so was a little worried about being able to follow what happens in this collection.  Fortunately, there are 2 sets of biographies and histories of the character at the back (an illustrated one and a textual one), which gives a potted chapter and verse and makes it easier to follow what’s happened – although I was very disappointed by the large number of typos in the text.

There are 3 stories in the collection – one where Deadpool is hired to kill Wolverine, one where Deadpool appears to join forces with the Skrull and the third ties in with the second where Deadpool discovers who ripped him off for payment on the Skrull job and decides to collect from Norman Osborn (aka the Green Goblin).  I thoroughly enjoyed the very black humour that runs through all the stories as well as the meta references to aspects of pop culture and the discussions that Deadpool has with the different aspects of his personality are a lot of twisted fun.  Plus there’s a lot of fun to be had from watching Deadpool and Wolverine just let rip at each other and both a scene involving a piano genuinely made me laugh out loud and a scene involving Deadpool dealing with super Skrull soldiers cloned from his DNA is absolutely bonkers but also completely hilarious.

I can’t really comment on the artwork because art isn’t really my thing beyond saying that I did like those panels where you see how Deadpool envisages people like Wolverine and Nick Fury versus how they “actually” are.  However there were times when I lost track of what was happening both because of the way the panels are laid out and because it almost felt like there was a panel missing to explain what had happened.  I’m saying this in full acknowledgement that comics aren’t usually my thing so I have no way knowing if this is normal or not.

All in all, this was a lot of fun and while it’s definitely more hardcore and complicated than the movies are but if, like me, you’re completely new to all this you can still follow what’s going on and get a lot of gory entertainment from it.